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In olden times people rarely slept in their bedrooms, which were mostly chambres de parade, where everyone was received and much business was transacted. The real bedroom was usually a smallish closet nearby. These chambres de parade were very splendid, the beds raised on a dais, and hung with fine damasks and tapestries tapestries thick with bullion fringes.
Such features are familiar to all in the strongly marked ridges of basketry, and much more pleasingly so in the delicate figures of damasks, embroideries, and laces.
I told her so, in some such pretty phrase as I could muster for the occasion. Those two blush-roses I just spoke of turned into a couple of damasks. I love the damask rose best of all. The flowers our mothers and sisters used to love and cherish, those which grow beneath our eaves and by our doorstep, are the ones we always love best.
The damasks and brocades for curtains and chairs were at almost fabulous prices. Few gentlemen, the clerk observed, give less than 3l. per yard for these articles. The most costly are purchased by the hotels. I saw some brocade embroidered in gold to the thickness of half an inch, some of which had been supplied to the St. Nicholas Hotel at 9l. per yard!
Further down, dressed in black, with vast pointed perukes and shaven faces, are the bailiff, Thomas Arnoton, and the notary, Master Ambroy, two grave objects among the flowing silks and figured damasks. Then come the fat majordomos, the pages, the grooms, the attendants; dame Barbe, all her keys suspended at her side on a ring of thin silver.
Rugs of priceless fur concealed the rough flooring. Chinese silks, Japanese damasks, Oriental tapestries smuggled in by the fur traders, covered the walls; and richest of silk attired the Russian officers and their ladies, compelled to beguile time here, where the only break in monotony was the arrival of fresh ships from America, or exiles from St.
There might be imported, long pepper, white pepper, white powder sugar, preserved nutmegs and ginger preserved, merabolans, bezoar stones, drugs of all sorts, agate heads, blood stones, musk, aloes socratrina, ambergris, rich carpets of Persia and of Cambaya, quilts of satin taffety, painted calicoes, Benjamin, damasks, satins and taffeties of China, quilts of China embroidered with silk, galls, sugar candy, China dishes, and porcelain of all sorts.
The vista of the street, stretching far adown between two rows of lofty edifices, was really gay and gorgeous with the silks, damasks, and tapestries of all bright hues, that flaunted from windows and balconies, whence ladies looked forth and looked down, themselves making the liveliest part of the show.
You see things in shop windows ticketed Scotch and English, but, until this new movement began, nothing marked Irish. Yet Limerick laces might tempt any fine lady, as well as Antrim linens and Down damasks. There is also Blarney tweed of great cheapness and excellence, Balina blankets, and the excellent Claddagh flannel.
There were silks and damasks and brocades; webbed tissues of the East, Coaen gauzes blue and green, Damascus purples, shot gold from Samarcand, crimson stuffs dipped in Syrian vats, rose-coloured silk from Trebizond, and embroidered jackets which smelt of Cairo or Bagdad, and glowed with the hues of Byzantium itself. Out of these she made choice.
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